Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales cleanup

As discussed in its TRS thread, Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales suffers from heavy misuse, with many examples straying from the intended use (a group being negatively stereotyped embraces the stereotype rather than being offended). It was agreed that the trope's standards should be tightened up, so that'll be what this thread is for. The wick check has plenty of bad examples, with most failing to account for the "negative stereotype" part. MLSG is specifically about negative stereotypes, not ambiguous or unambiguously positive ones; positive examples should be moved to Germans Love David Hasselhoff.

Don't forget about things such as Canadians liking the negative aspects of Canada Eh, Texans with Everything Is Big in Texas, etc.

Thanks for linking this thread. Bringing here my request.

On Anastasia, the fact that the movie was a success in Russia is mentioned under Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales. Fact is, Anastasia is an American work based on Russia that got popular there because it was well made and respectful, not because the characters are some sort of stereotyped Russians. Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales insists that the trope applies to stereotyped individuals (or small groups) that are appreciated by the country they're aiming at, not to the much more generic "people appreciated a work about their own country made by foreign people". The trope for this should anyway be Germans Love David Hasselhoff.

yep, move it to Germans Love David Hasselhoff instead. i mentioned this in the TRS thread but a big problem with Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales is that people assume it means "people enjoy it when they're represented by foreign media regardless of intent" when the trope specifically entails a negative/stereotyped representation

I guess this is the best place to ask? I noticed this was removed from The Simpsons episode "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo":

"A handful of people in Japan who managed to watch the episode loved it and believed that it should not have been removed in the first place citing that it would still be protected by Japan's free speech laws (in spite of the scene with Homer tossing the Emperor into a sumo mawashi Dumpster)."

I seem to understand the problem, it was original listed right after Banned in China (technically removed due to fears that it might offend the Japanese) so when it was moved into the YMMV, the context was lost (although I thought it made just as much sense). Now, I guess the real problem is sample size as I cannot tell you how many Japanese people actually saw the episode but I did find a forum thread that I can't find anymore discussing it; and from what I gathered from my halfass Japanese was that they liked and recognized it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Japanese culture and found it at least more palatable than South Park's depictions. Having explained that, do you suppose this is a valid example?

There's now a dedicated Simpsons cleanup thread:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16205732750A37197200

just to give a response outside of the simpsons thread, i'm not toooo sure? it's a unique case because of the Banned in China situation and the general reception not being that widespread because of it. i could see the case for keeping it, though, if it's like you mentioned that japanese people recognize it's a tongue-in-cheek parody

I'd like to bring up the trope's use on Hazbin Hotel. The whole YMMV page seems... kind of bloated, but MLSG seems... well, basically just "well some people of that minority like it so it's fine," with the sources being... like, random twitter an You Tube links.

• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales:
  • Angel Dust is frequently criticized for being heavily reminiscent of negative gay stereotypes, being portrayed as sleazy, overtly sexual, exaggeratedly flouncing, perverted, egotistical, and rude. Some fans think these traits lend to a more nuanced, unsanitized representation of queerness, and more so with the Hidden Depths revealed in the "Addict" music video.
    • With what was especially revealed in Addict, Angel Dust's character especially resonated with sex workers and the like, particularly those who went through similar experiences as him. He's seen as someone whose trauma they can relate to rather than a mocking stereotype.

This one, in particular, links a thread from a suspended account that says that because Angel Dust reflects their experiences, the criticism against that character comes off as 'a personal attack'. Also constantly calling people who are offended "soft" and "children," and also outright telling someone they "don't care" about the counterarguments towards the defense. It's... really weird? This honestly doesn't mean anything. It got a lot of likes I guess? The other one just sort of veers off into the concept of sex trafficking strippers, then praises the show for having a stripper be sex trafficked, as if that's something new and deep and not a character trait incredibly common in characters who are strippers. Neither of these defenses actually really address how the character is actually written, just that the broad concepts can actually be accurate, and neither thread is really by anyone of merit.

• Vaggie— who is of Salvadoran descent— draws many comparisons to the "angry Latina" stereotype, yet she remains well-liked among many Latino and Salvadoran fans alike.

This one I have less real evidence for beyond one of the sources literally being a random comment on an art stream of the creator of the show, and another a random tumblr post just saying it's good there's a Salvadorian character. Neither actually address the criticism at all or even acknowledge the stereotypes being cited.

It really feels like this entry was slapped together quickly by a Google search or something, it's kind of a nothing entry even ignoring all the general controversy surrounding the show.

Edited by NAFEDUDE on May 26th 2022 at 12:17:00 PM

The Angel Dust entry perfectly encapsulates the problems with Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales to me.

(Prefacing this by saying that I'm a straight woman, and have only watched snippets of Hazbin Hotel.) To start with, we'd need to establish that Angel is an offensive stereotype of a gay man, something that already gives us enough issues on the Unfortunate Implications page. (Given that the show has other queer main characters, namely Charlie and Vaggie, who aren't hypersexual or Camp Gay, it at least seems unlikely that Angel was written to be intentionally offensive to gay people.) Then, we'd need to establish that some gay men and/or sex workers see him as positive representation.

I mean, clearly there are people who feel either way, but how do we sort out what's just a minority character with good and bad traits exists, what's harmful stereotyping, and what's MLSG?

tl;dr I have no clue how to fix this, at this point I'd just be happy to see this trope take a hike now that we have Watched It for the Representation.

Edited by DoktorvonEurotrash on May 30th 2022 at 9:48:52 AM

Isn't Angel a promiscuous gay sex worker? That is a stereotype even if it wasn't made maliciously. I don't see why we need to verify this above every YMMV opinion relying on the honor system, and I can verify anecdotally there are gay dudes who relate to Angel while there are others (usually who don't like the show anyway) who really dislike him for the same reasons.

Yeah, what "merit" is required here exactly? I'm a little concerned lately about how audience reactions are being handled, as people try harder and harder to be objective, it starts to feel like we're deciding what opinions are "correct" or not. If there really are LGBT people / sex workers who think Angel Dust is good representation, then it counts. I don't think we should be analyzing everyone's opinions in order to determine how "valid" they are.

I mean, I'm also a straight white person so I might be a little wrong here, but the point of an audience reaction is just to say how audiences react, not to say if those reactions are valid or "have merit".

To me, the problem is that MLSG requires two audience reactions: first that a sizable audience finds a character a problematic stereotype, then that members of the character's group sees the character as good representation.

The problems shown in this thread all virtually boil down to how to verify that this is the case.

Well, if nothing else it's clear some people consider Angel problematic, but I'm not sure how much evidence we need that people in the minority group(s) like him.

I guess it just feels like we try really hard with some YMMV concepts and on others don't try at all to verify if they're "correct", or at least aren't nearly as strict about it.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 30th 2022 at 6:29:07 AM

The problem is mainly that both examples attempt to validate the claim by citing examples, but those examples are essentially random social media posts, so it sort of ends up achieving the opposite. There are millions of people on the planet and so, essentially, once something gets popular enough, pretty much every contradictory opinion on any aspect of a work will be held by someone, and so MLSG would basically apply to every work that has controversial representarion that gets popular enough. The wick check specifically argues that Frank-N-Furter is *not* an example of MLSG, which seems to be the most parallel to the Hazbin examples. The archived Twitter thread cited for Angel Dust is also weirdly myopic, as well. I feel like outright dismissing any criticism of a character isn't an example of MLSG. Weasel Words are also cited as bad form for this trope and I'd say both examples use them. "Some fans" think this? Well, obviously. That's how opinions work.

In addition, MLSG goes beyond fans of the work, which complicates things because many people calling these characters relatable became superfans of the franchise after a pilot episode. But, the trope namer comes from one of the most recognizable cartoons in history, yet proportionally you don't see many people latch on to Looney Tunes the same way. I feel like that muddies things further, because you have people who are very protective of the show who love the character, and you have people who maybe don't care as much about the show as a work but feel the existence of such a popular character is harmful to the real world community, and I don't think MLSG takes fandom into account, just cultural relevancy.

To clarify on all this, I'm bisexual, so, I very much have a frame of reference on MLM stereotypes and the like. Obviously my opinion doesn't rule all, but, probably important to mention. Maybe I should've led with that.

I'd also like to point out MLSG is based on a very well-known phenomenon that focuses on how real-world groups react to something, while most YMMV tropes are based around more personal opinions (i.e., That One Level doesn't need to be verified because there's no real world implications of someone finding a video game level difficult that some others don't). How can one's milage very as to if a culture finds a character a stereotype, but likes them regardless? Or finds a character intended to be offensive actually quite relatable? That's a thing that either does or doesn't happen; the phenomenon itself isn't actually all that subjective. You can't really argue against the fact Mexicans do, in fact, love Speedy Gonzalez. That's an objective fact that they hold that subjective opinion, so it doesn't work the same way. How can 'my' mileage vary? Am I able to say "no they don't, actually" and have that be considered as valid on its face? That'd be ridiculous, at that point its just Opinion Override

Edited by NAFEDUDE on May 30th 2022 at 9:03:15 AM

Oh, I can definitely see where it'd be complicated. I just don't want to see this end up like, say, the UI thread, where every other source is deemed to not be valid enough even if it's sharing a common audience reaction. It's never easy to determine what's common or fringe if you're not in the fandom or involved in the discourse surrounding the work, and I get wanting to be thorough. I guess my only concern is that this might be headed in the direction of "I disagree with these arguments, therefor it's wrong", which I'm not at all accusing you of, but it is a very common problem with YMMV cleanup threads. And with a trope like this, that's just a dangerous mindset to slip into even if the goal is just to be accurate.

just a quick note that I edited in another paragraph explaining my take on why MLSG is generally handled differently; it may come off as aggressive but that's more just how I argue my points, I'm not really singling anyone out here or anything.

Ah, in regards to that paragraph specifically I think what's tripping you up is the difference between YMMV and Audience Reactions. MLSG is an audience reaction — it's only subjective insofar as some parts of the audience might not have this reaction, but the reaction itself either exists or it doesn't. It's not YMMV, which is reserved for things like Complete Monster, and is more about things that may or may not exist in the work depending on how one interprets things.

So, there's no real "mileage variance" here at all, because what we're troping is the fact that audiences react this way, which is entirely objective, as you said. But this is true of all audience reaction tropes, including The Scrappy, Ensemble Dark Horse, Base-Breaking Character, and more. Basically, don't think of it as being about personal opinions, which it's actually not for at all. Think of it as being about audience opinions as a whole, and us just stating facts about what people think.

The big problem is setting a standard of what counts as an offensive portrayal and what doesn’t, because then every single example would fall under scrutiny.

Going back to Angel Dust, how are we gonna decide if he counts as a “positive” or “negative” stereotype with absolutely zero gray area whatsoever? Setting a baseline for offensiveness is just gonna make things harder, and potentially screw over even the Trope Namer.

Ah, fair enough. Many of the intricacies are still new to me, but, at least my actual understanding of Audience Reactions seems to be pretty accurate then; the other arguments I made were based on that understanding.

I will reiterate I think a big reason with these examples specifically is that the examples explicitly cite takes but, they're sort of random and you could easily counter them with other takes, so they end up looking... desperate, to me at least. I guess that itself is subjective but you probably shouldn't cite two individual social media posts and instead just describe the phenomenon. That and actually liking the show isn't really a prerequisite for having an opinion on the character (which is a common tactic to defend a character, by accusing people of not liking the work and just wanting to start controversy; see Apu for a fairly contemporary example.)

I mean, the premise of MLSG is literally based on the fact Speedy was, especially early on, considered offensive, and a variety of factors made that not the case in Mexico (primarily his accent being a nonissue in dubbing). The trope namer itself has to be offensive in some capacity or the entire premise (character seen as an offensive stereotype for whatever reason actually loved by the culture its stereotyping) doesn't work. With no offensiveness, there's no trope, and it becomes GLDH or another trope. Inherently, there has to be some potentially offensive aspect. That itself is subjective and hard to quantify but, the entire trope is built around that premise. Considering Angel Dust even has an argument surrounding him I'd say it's safe to say he hits that threshold, but does that make him the trope by that alone? At the very least the examples should probably be rewritten but I didn't feel comfortable making a unilateral decision on the subject.

Edited by NAFEDUDE on May 30th 2022 at 9:33:42 AM

I do believe there’s a compromise here. We could possibly define it based on the offensiveness of the stereotype overall, rather than the offensiveness of the character themselves. This would let Angel Dust fit the criteria regardless.

I think in general that's the metric used; if, in the broad sense, the character hits the description of a common or known stereotype, they hit the "Speedy Gonzales" aspect. The big problem then becomes "Mexicans Love," which raises the question of "how many and why," which from my understanding is a key component. As the entries are written they seem slightly "gotcha" in framing, so I think if we keep them we should just axe the links entirely, especially since, as I mentioned previously, the archived Twitter link engages in serious Opinion Myopia by suggesting that people who are offended have never suffered and are just wrong outright for having a different perspective, and the other Angel Dust link seems only tangentially related to the character's writing and veers off into real human trafficking. They actually hurt the argument being made by the entry because they seem so cherrypicked and that's probably why most examples don't link to individual takes at all.

If you think the links are inflammatory then remove them for ROCEJ concerns.

I also worry we may be too hard on what counts as a stereotype. They don't always need to be a Flat Character or anything. In fact that's partly why MLSG exists, people seeing beyond stereotypical traits or embracing them in a more human context.

Edited by mightymewtron on May 31st 2022 at 10:49:49 AM

As a Mexican (ahem) that loves Speedy Gonzalez, it was always apparent to me that despite his positive character traits, Speedy's entire joke was based around being a stereotype. MLSG doesn't attempt to account if the stereotype has some positive attributes (remember Positive Discrimination is a thing) or is something that can have dire consequences in real life. The trope simply documents an audience reaction.

I don't know the series you guys are talking about, but from a small read it seems that Angel Dust has stereotypical traits of a homosexual, and yet warrants a fanbase on the LGBT community because of... insert x reasons. The trope is meant simply to report that audience reaction. We shouldn't attempt to measure if that reaction is "valid", nor gauge the apparent percentage of a demographic that actually likes the character, because not only is this forcing some inexistent standards on the trope, there's not a practical way to do that. Forgive me if I appear a bit brash.

If you still have issues with how the trope is presented, you can create a discussion thread.

Edited by Edgar81539 on May 31st 2022 at 6:29:57 AM

I'll be honest that, as a non Mexican, I'm not even sure what Speedy's stereotype is. I'm not saying he's not stereotypical or anything, I've just always been unclear on what the fuss was about. And that same issue might apply across the board. Unless you know what the stereotypes even are, then you might not even realize how the character could be offensive.

The broken spanish, his nature as a ladies man ("Speedy Gonzales is friends with everyone's sister") and how some of the cartoons had the joke that Speedy would cross some kind of "border" while the "gringo" guard (either Daffy or Sylvester depending on the cartoon) was too incompetent to actually do anything. This plays up into the "mojado" perception that has existed since... well, since immigration from Mexico to USA was a thing.

However, like I mentioned earlier, the stereotype doesn't necessarily need to be entirely negative, or outweigh the positive character traits of the character.

Edited by Edgar81539 on May 31st 2022 at 6:23:33 AM